


Paradigm Shift

by PunkHazard



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-09
Updated: 2014-05-09
Packaged: 2018-01-24 00:07:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1584449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunkHazard/pseuds/PunkHazard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SH-05 tramples Shanghai underfoot when they're sixteen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paradigm Shift

SH-05 tramples Shanghai underfoot when they're sixteen and living in Guangzhou, where they'd been sent after Kaiceph. They get the news in the apartment their grandmother used to own, the place now managed by a distant aunt. The last message from their parents, a simple text in a blinking Skype window, reads _Be safe, take care of each other._

Jin sends a reply every ten minutes (Where are you? Are you safe? Please call us), scrubbing away tears with the collar of his shirt while Hu refreshes a list of survivors, searching for any and every permutation of their parents' names that they know.

Cheung cooks dinner. He checks the list of known deceased and saves the message he receives late that night, when both brothers are already asleep.

> This is a rescue worker. The owner of this phone has passed away, are you her relatives? Call XX-XXXX-XXXX for information on what to do next.

He calls the number. The lady on the other end tells him that to collect their parents' salvaged belongings, they will have to come to Shanghai. He tells her that they're sixteen and they probably won't be coming to Shanghai. She says, oh, and gives him another number. This one to a government agency that places orphans with new families; he doesn't call it. He doesn't sleep at all that night. 

In the morning, he turns off their alarm clock, lets Jin and Hu sleep in until they wake up, still bundled in their blankets as Cheung sits down between them and breaks the news. Hu holds it together for about two seconds longer than Jin does before they both collapse against him, no need to check for physical proof of what he says; he wouldn't lie about this. He wouldn't tell them unless he'd made every possible kind of sure.

His shirt is soaked down the front by the time they're calm and he remembers to pour some water for them. Hu says plaintively that he has a headache, and Jin's eyes are swollen and red, so he tells them both to go back to sleep. 

When they wake up, he shows them the number. 

"They'll find someone to take care of us," Cheung tells them, "but they'll split us up."

Jin crumples up the paper and tosses it out the window, with Hu's blessing. 

"Okay," Cheung says, "then here's the plan."

* * *

The train to Hong Kong takes three hours and they stand the whole way, their new(ish) apartment on the fringe of Kowloon another thirty minutes. The place is perilously close to the coast, has one tiny bathroom with the toilet shoved almost right up against the shower stall (really a corner with a drain and curtains), a table and a hotplate to denote the kitchen, a tiny fridge shoved haphazardly in there as well. There's just enough room for a mattress on the floor. It's a dump, compared to the places they used to live, and the rent is high. Lower than their old place, though, and they have a few months to find a job with their remaining funds.

That night, Cheung lays between his brothers on an old blanket they'd bought on the way (a real place to sleep will have to wait). When their breaths have evened out and he thinks they've fallen asleep, he stares at their crumbling ceiling, the peeling paint on the walls, the cracked windows, and throws an arm over his eyes.

It's been a week since SH-05, the kaiju not even big enough for a callsign beyond location and number. Cheung knows he has the two most important people in the world next to him; that they're safe, and that he'll do anything to make sure they stay that way. That of all the things they've lost, the two people in the world he couldn't live without are still alive.

But he's sixteen and his parents are gone, and he has two little brothers to look after. All the baby pictures they'd left in Shanghai, their old belongings that their parents had promised to ship to Guangzhou-- toys, books, DVDs, every mark of their childhood that had been stored there is buried under the wreckage of skyscrapers. 

Cheung's breath hitches, his body uncomfortably hot in the suffocating humidity of Hong Kong's summer. He covers his mouth with one hand, sits up slowly to avoid disturbing Jin and Hu, crosses his arms over his knees and buries his face in them.

A minute later, he realizes he wasn't being as quiet as he thought he was and Jin's arms loop around his waist, Hu's hands on his cheeks, wiping them with the edge of the blanket. They don't say anything, but Jin rubs his back in slow, comforting circles and Hu clasps their hands together, squeezing every few seconds until Cheung's cried out. Then they pull him back down, squishing close just in case he tries to get up again.

* * *

The other kids (teens, really) in their neighborhood are, put charitably, unfriendly. Worse than the ones in Guangzhou, who they'd started scrapping with the day they'd arrived. Freaks, dumb city boys, losers from the coast. Shanghai-accented Cantonese, you don't even remember the language of your grandparents? 

Whatever; they know how to fight. 

They don't know how to fight against knives in the hands of poor and hungry boys living too close to the Breach, desperation in their faces and their eyes and their sunken cheeks, but they learn. The three of them get the occasional odd job hauling freight at the shipyard or running deliveries, but no one wants to take three teenagers on permanently and their funds dwindle. 

Hannibal approaches them first, after they manage to beat a crowd of boys much bigger though less experienced than they are. Cooperation and surprise are key; most of the neighborhood has no idea they're triplets. Twins, at most. They sign with Hannibal and the news spreads quick, boys on the street leave them alone (they even invite them to play ball sometimes) but Cheung finds he prefers concrete to the ring-- at least above ground, there's always an escape. 

The first broken nose Cheung learns to patch is his own. It's not, thankfully, serious enough to pop anything out of place so he lets it heal on its own, though he does walk around with purple-red splotches on his face for weeks afterwards. The first sprain he wraps is Jin's, when he falls carelessly in the ring and lands on his wrist. One time, Hu scrapes the skin off his knuckles on a bad punch and they spend that night's winnings on a first-aid kit-- and some handwraps.

Still, Cheung has his eyes on something bigger. He didn't move them to Hong Kong just because they can speak Cantonese and the real estate is cheap so close to the water; there's a Shatterdome on the edge of Victoria Harbour.

They happen to be looking for siblings; even better if they're multiples. If twins are great, Cheung figures, then triplets are at least fifty percent better.

* * *

Their first drift makes the scientists reconsider whether or not siblings might even need prior screening; they shatter the Gage twins' record for highest initial compatibility. Only one thing really changes between them, though it's insignificant.

 _No one could possibly love anyone as much as I love my brothers_ becomes _Oh, well obviously I meant no one **else**_.

Some things do come up, though. The times Jin watched food in their little fridge in Hong Kong run low, and he'd swipe a potato or an eggplant or some fruit from a grocery the next neighborhood over, then toss it in when Cheung was too exhausted to notice. All the times Hu would crawl up in the middle of the night and haul a blanket to whichever brother had fallen asleep at the table, bent over a workbook. That time Cheung got the text that told him their parents were dead and he'd decided to let his brothers sleep for a few more hours so he locked himself in the bathroom with a laptop and searched for places they could move to support themselves, with the money that had been left to them. 

He'd dunked his head in the sink every time he felt like crying until he didn't and then he'd e-mailed a renter, just so he could tell Jin and Hu when they woke up that even though their parents are dead, he has a plan and they'll be fine. He'd spent the whole night wondering if Jin and Hu might opt to call the placement agency anyway.

The moment they shut the door to their room, Jin slams Cheung up against the wall and snarls into his face, "You're a fucking _asshole_." Hu drags them both to the bed, their knees catching on the edge and all of them tumbling onto it. Jin still has Cheung's shirt fisted in his hands, but Hu wraps his arms over his shoulders from behind and they don't move (or let him move).

"Really?" Cheung says incredulously, but he smiles when Jin shakes his head and kisses him on the neck, just under his jaw. It's as high as he can reach with the way they've landed.

"Shut up, just-- shit, we're so sorry."

"Sorry we weren't with you," Hu breathes, his arms tightening, "and we left you alone for so long."

Jin frowns when Cheung reaches up and tugs on his ear, his other hand closing over Hu's. "You didn't."

"You should've woken us up."

He doesn't argue that point, but Cheung didn't know much then; all he knew was that their lives were about to change and it would be scary and hard and he'd wanted to let his brothers rest for a little longer before he told them. Jin grabs his hand, pressing Cheung's knuckles to his lips and interlocking their fingers. Hu laughs against the back of his neck, all three of them embarassingly teary-eyed and short of breath, but they stay like that for nearly an hour until the announcement that dinner's about to start.


End file.
